'This is a horror story': Illegal apartments created halfway between floors

HTV National Desk

Published
4:44 pm CDT, Tuesday, August 20, 2019

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'This is a horror story': Illegal apartments created halfway between floors

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It was a shocking discovery for officials with the New York City Buildings Department.

According to WPIX, the owner of an apartment created an additional floor. It sits between the fourth and fifth floors and houses nine micro apartments for rent.

The small, crowded space is between 4 1/2 and 6 feet above the floor.

The illegal micro apartments are windowless. Tenants are charged $600 per month.

“I’m concerned for the safety of the tenants, mostly an immigrant population," Ben Kallos, a New York City Council Member, told WPIX. “Part of me thinks this is like the movie 'Being John Malkovich,' back in the 1990s. Then there was this idea of creating a floor in between. But that was fiction and this is a horror story."

Officials issued a vacate order for several of the apartments.

The residents living in the micro apartments were offered emergency housing by the Red Cross.

“Every New Yorker deserves a safe and legal place to live, which is why we’re committed to rooting out dangerous firetraps and ordering the landlords to make these apartments safe," the NYC Buildings Department said in a statement. "Tenants living in truncated and windowless dwelling units like this poses an extreme hazard to their safety, as well as the safety of their neighbors, and first responders – a hazard that cannot be tolerated in our city.”